Monday, January 19, 2009

Last day for the house of cards

And hopefully after tomorrow, it all comes tumbling down. So what immediate challenges are left on the docket down there in the first-rate facility in the "tropics" as Cheney infamously referred to the American gulag and historical blight....

245 remain in custody. As this NY Times report today points out, 24 have been declared to have been improperly held in the last few months: "Rulings of Wrongful Detentions at Guantanamo." Why the sudden flow of judgments? "Since a Supreme Court decision in June gave detainees the right to have their detentions reviewed by federal judges in habeas cases, the government has won only three of them." It's quite the record for the U.S. government since June, 3 wins, 23 losses, underscoring in the dying days of this institution how unsubstantiated the charges have been.

Meanwhile, on the last day of Bush rule at the base, Omar Khadr and a handful of other detainees face arraignment today, again, in what Khadr's lawyer calls one last "big mess and chaos." Yep, despite both defence and prosecution counsel being in surprising agreement that it would not be in the "interests of justice" to permit this Bush administration manoeuver to obtain guilty pleas from 9/11 conspirators the day before Obama is sworn in, the court will be in session at Gitmo. Of course it will.